An outtake from PM Antonis Samaras’ 2012 campaign with New Democracy was leaked yesterday evening and it quickly flooded Greek Facebook & Twitter users. In it, Samaras discloses what’s the best time of the day for sex.

The fact that the video makes the otherwise strict and distant Greek politician look more human has raised suspicions that the video was not leaked by accident but on purpose.

The Greek Prime Minister prefers having sex in the morning but, unfortunately for him, most young people do it at nights…

New Democracy’s electoral base is mainly composed by older generations. I remember going to their main pre-election rally in June 2012 and almost 80% of the people there were more than 50 years old.

Which is why one of the jokes around, about why Antonis Samaras’ party hasn’t made up its mind yet on whether they will have an outdoors rally in Athens, is that they are afraid that the elders will catch a cold and won’t go to vote for their party.

This is a photo Alexis Tsipras releasing a bird. The photo was taken on the day of the Epiphany (6/1/15). The bird symbolises the Holy Spirit.

SYRIZA is often attacked by Ne Democracy MPs of being a bunch of atheists which is why the photo quickly made a certain impression. During the past few months SYRIZA has been trying to play down these (otherwise non-political) accusations by visiting monasteries, religious leaders and even the Pope. Outgoing PM Antonis Samaras has even said some days ago that if SYRIZA wins the religious icons that decorate almost every public building, from ministries to schools, will be removed.

The photo of Tsipras releasing the bird was used as a poster for an online event where Tsipras answered questions via Twitter.

And this is a cartoon by Dimitris Hantzopoulos (TA NEA daily). It combines all of the above with Hitchcock’s legendary movie “The Birds”.

-Mr Hitchcock, one of these birds is the Holy Spirit. What are the rest? -It doesn’t matter, my boy. The important thing is the suspense.

The Greek political parties have started broadcasting their political ads and thought it might be interesting to translate some of them for (fun) you.

New Democracy (ruling party) has produced three videos so far. The first one is a desperate (in terms of acting, at least) attempt to show Antonis Samaras close to the younger generation (the majority of ND’s voters are above their 40s or even 50s).

The reference to the stadium is one more cheap attempt to attract votes of supporters of AEK Athens football club. They have been asking for a new stadium for more than a decade now and New Democracy is promising to make their dream too. I loved two details in this video.

The first one is that our PM indirectly admits that Greece, the country he has been governing for the past 2,5 years, is not a normal and serious country yet.

The second one is a symbolism. Greek youth faces unprecedented high unemployment and Samaras tells them “keep on training and we will keep on working”. I hope this was not some sort of subliminal message.

Their second video is even more ridiculous and desperate to use anything that happens in order to demonise SYRIZA. In this video New Democracy plays the security card in the same way it has adopted scare-mongering as its main strategy not only to win the 2012 elections (I can still remember them saying that we will be queuing for bread if SYRIZA won) but to control reactions and unrest during their administration. Samaras goes as far as using (again) the Charlie Hebdo story in order to stress his alignment with the “Fortress Europe” approach.

Their third video is an ode to individualism. A working man, insecure and alone, is having his thoughts about Greece.

He is scared he will lose his job if SYRIZA wins. This is how they want people to think. Just keep on xeroxing and shut the fuck up.

SYRIZA tried to play around with more positive words. Lots of crisis porn footage, the usual lock somewhere and a wind of change somewhere in between. Big nice words like dignity and justice that verify the vagueness of what they want to do.

Another video by SYRIZA is this.

It reminded me of an older ad produced by PASOK, the ailing coalition partner of New Democracy. Papandreou and Tsipras get prepared to address the crowd, they walk from the backstage to the main scene like Rocky Balboa was heading to face his opponents. Lots of former PASOK politicians have jumped to SYRIZA in the meantime and there are more and more people calling SYRIZA as the new PASOK. So this similarity looks even funnier now.

And last but not least, the video of Independent Greeks. I decided to translate it because it’s funny, despite the fact that the party might not manage to gain any seats at the Parliament after the elections. Their only hope is to reach the 3% threshold, gain 5-10 seats and be invited by SYRIZA to govern together.

As Greek satirical site Luben.tv put it “Why on earth do you keep showing us grey-haired men caressing children?”

A friend was diagnosed with depression. His doctor gave him a prescription with some pills. One of them is called Cipralex (some read this as Tsipralex which sounds a lot like the name of SYRIZA’s leader, Alexis Tsipras).

The irony is that the pharmaceutical company that produces these pills [Lundbeck, Denmark] has a starfish for its logo. Looks like a red star to me.

I think the Greek PM Antonis Samaras has been taking too many of these pills and kind of lost it with his pre-election rhetoric. His last scaremongering bit: “The Greeks want to remain in Europe and do not want to move to North Korea because Syriza wants to”. ROFL

This is how ANT1 TV reported the riots that took place in the Exarchia district of Athens on 6/12/14. The journalist, Yorgos Karaivaz, have surpassed Nobelist poets and imagined himself in one of the fiercest battlegrounds of human history. Enjoy the description and ponder the reasons why a nationwide TV station would go this low to describe in this way an otherwise pretty simple news story.

Like this:

An interesting video was filmed last night during the extensive riots that took place after the demo in honour of 15-year old Alexis Grigoropoulos who was assassinated by a policeman on December 2008.

Greek demonstrators often mention the existence of plain clothes policemen and the infiltration of agent provocateurs in demonstrations in Greece. I too used to believe that this was some kind of a conspiracy theory until I started attending demos after 2009. International media have been reluctant to report on this (with some exceptions) with correspondents finding it difficult to believe that such totalitarian practices are still being used in an EU country.

But this video, filmed last night in Exarchia district of Athens and posted on YouTube by Sto Kokkino radio, shows clearly a big number of what would otherwise look like “a band of hoodies or violent rioters” passing by a team of riot police, heading towards the district’s square where anarchists had set up barricades.

The Greek government does not acknowledge the use of such practices, nor is it expected to comment on the issue after the publication of this video.

Upd: Here’s a second video from the same place/time (Thanks Janine Louloudi).

In a response to the video posted by Chloe Kritharas, the chairman of the Union of Policemen said that the Greek Police has launched (one more) investigation about the incident. He added that according to his information by his colleagues, the first in a series of mistakes was made by the kiosk owner who refused to sell any of his products to the raiding riot policemen. He also said that the policemen have left money on the counter of the kiosk and that, normally, they should have arrested the kiosk owner in the end for refusing to serve them.